State News Roundup

Software publishers may not sue states and their agencies for
copyright infringement because such action would violate the 11th
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting states "sovereign
immunity,'' a federal judge in California has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Harry L. Hupp last month dismissed a suit
against the regents of the University of California, saying that the
federal copyright law does not explicitly include states and their
agencies among those entities subject to damage claims under the
law.

The suit, filed in July 1986 by BV Engineering, alleges that the
University of California at Los Angeles allowed some of the firm's
software programs to be duplicated and used in a manner prohibited by
the copyright law.

The decision is being appealed, according to Kenneth Wasch,
executive director of the Software Publishers Association, which will
represent the interests of software publishers in the case.

If the appeal fails, Mr. Wasch said, the association will mount a
drive to amend the copyright law to include states among those that can
be sued for damages.

Three of Georgia's richest counties could be forced to pump more local
money into their school systems next year, following a state audit that
accuses them of underestimating property values.

The annual report by the state department of audits, released last
month, charges that Cobb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties have
underestimated their real-estate values by an average of 12 percent.
The counties, which should have been assessing property at 40 percent
of its fair-market value, were assessing it at 30 percent, 29 percent,
and 25 percent, respectively, according to Charlie Ridley, the study's
director.

The state audit gauges the wealth and taxing efficiency of local
governments by comparing the actual prices brought by land sales with
the rates at which they are assessed.

The state department of education uses the audit to estimate how
much money each school system must contribute to the public
schools.

Under Georgia's education-reform act, local school systems are
required to raise a certain amount of money for public education,
equivalent to a tax rate of five mills. Local systems that raise more
than that amount are eligible for extra state funding.

The new audit figures mean that the three wealthy counties could be
forced to raise taxes to qualify for the added state dollars.

The Gwinnett County school board, for example, will be required to
pay $22.2 million into its own system this year to qualify for $77
million in state funds. Next year, if the new state audit figures are
used, that figure could climb to $29.7 million.

Black male students in Louisiana are at greatest risk of failing school
and being forced to repeat a grade, according to an analysis by Lee P.
Gary Jr., a private management consultant.

The study, released late last month, is the first to examine school
failure by race and sex since the state began publishing such data
three years ago, Mr. Gary said.

In analyzing data from the Louisiana Department of Education for the
school years 1983-84 through 1985-86, he found that approximately
57,000 of the 490,000 public-school students in grades 1-8 were not
promoted each year. Of those, two-thirds were male and three-fifths
were male or female members of minority groups. Of the minority
students, 99 percent were black.

Approximately 34 percent of all 1st through 8th graders who failed a
grade were black males, even though black males constituted only 21
percent of the students in those grades.

"If you have to pick one given group, based upon sex and ethnicity,
the black male is at greatest risk in terms of public education in
Louisiana,'' said Mr. Gary, a former director of education for both the
New Orleans Chamber of Commerce and the New Orleans Business Task Force
on Education Inc.

Mr. Gary said he plans to take his figures to state legislators in
an effort to win support for mandatory full-day kindergarten for all
5-year-olds and mandatory pre-kindergarten for all 4-year-olds.

The Wyoming Department of Education will be partially reorganized in an
effort to address the problems of "at risk'' children, a top state
school official said last week.

As many as half of the state's children could be classified as at
risk in terms of their potential for dropping out, suicide, drug
addiction, abuse, crime, pregnancy, or illiteracy, said Audrey M.
Cotherman, deputy state superintendent of public instruction and the
author of a new report that outlined the departmental
reorganization.

"The whole excellence movement, plus a cutback in state funding,
makes us worry about the student who is at risk,'' Ms. Cotherman said.
"They could easily be lost in the system.''

The report, "Children at Risk: Roadblocks to Achieving Potential,''
includes 13 recommendations for expanding or improving state programs
to minimize the risks these students face.

The report recommends no additional funding for such programs,
however. "We are simply rearranging people and priorities [within the
department] to deal with these problems,'' Ms. Cotherman said. She said
she had reassigned six department officials to work on implementing the
report's suggestions.

The report will be released officially in two to three months, Ms.
Cotherman said.

New Mexico's top school-finance officer has resigned following
accusations that he had been "double dipping'' by collecting both a
salary and retirement benefits.

Orlando Giron--who, as interim director of the state's Office of
Education, oversaw New Mexico's education budget--resigned on April
30.

A veteran of more than 20 years in state government, Mr. Giron was
criticized by state legislators earlier this year after it was revealed
that he had been drawing from one state retirement fund while paying
into another, said Alan Morgan, state superintendent of public
instruction.

Under New Mexico law, state education-department employees may
choose the retirement fund in which they plan to participate. Employees
may not, however, begin collecting from any one fund while still
employed in the same state office.

Mr. Morgan said that Mr. Giron, whom he described as having "a
sterling track record,'' switched retirement funds in July 1985, when
he resigned from one position and moved to another job in the same
department.

"It was his impression, from a telephone conversation with the
Attorney General's office, that it was O.K.,'' Mr. Morgan said.
However, a new Attorney General earlier this year ruled that the
practice was illegal.

Vol. 06, Issue 33

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